Texas Discovery Significantly Boosts Production And Revenue for Strike Energy

Strike Energy is pleased to report that successful production testing of its latest oil and gas discovery in Texas will increase the company’s production by 25%.

The results from testing at the Gardner Duncan 1 well on the Louise prospect in the Gulf Coast, Texas, came in at the upper end of the Company’s expectations of 2 to 5 million cubic feet per day.

The key test data, which has been reported to the Texas Railroad Commission, is as follows:

Gas Rate: 3.7 million cubic feet per day
Oil-Condensate Rate: 111 barrels per day
Water Rate: 80 barrels per day

Cobalt International Energy, Inc. Announces Force Majeure Notification on Drill Rig

Houston, Texas - June 1, 2010 - Cobalt International Energy, Inc. (“Cobalt”) (NYSE: CIE) announced that it had invoked the force majeure provision under the drilling contract with Diamond Offshore Company for the Ocean Monarch drilling rig. This rig was moored and ready to begin drilling operations at the location of their North Platte #1 exploratory well on Garden Banks 959. The reason for invoking force majeure was the steps announced on May 27, 2010 by the United States Government which suspended all drilling operations in the deepwaters of the Gulf of Mexico. Cobalt had obtained all necessary permits and insurance as required by law and regulation to commence drilling operations. Cobalt believes that the direct financial impact of triggering force majeure on the Ocean Monarch will result in a net expenditure to the company of approximately $15 million.

I love researching and learning how things came about. This past weekend on the History channel I was able to watch the popular series of America The Story of Us. On this particular episode (6/7) it focused on the kickstart of the oil industry.

On January 10, 1901, an enormous geyser of oil exploded from a drilling site at Spindletop Hill, a mound created by an underground salt deposit located near Beaumont in Jefferson County, southeastern Texas. Reaching a height of more than 150 feet and producing close to 100,000 barrels a day, the "gusher" was more powerful than any previously seen in the world. A booming oil industry soon grew up around the oil field at Spindletop, and many of the major oil companies in America, including Gulf Oil (which will later become Chevron), Texas Fuel Company (Texaco) and Humble Oil Company (Exxon), can trace their origins there.

In its first year, Spindletop produced more than 3.5 million barrels of oil; in its second, production rose to 17.4 million. In addition to driving the price of oil down and destroying the previous monopoly held by John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil, Spindletop ushered in a new era in Texas-based industry, and was enormously influential in the state's future development.

A federal appeals court Thursday, May 13, 2010 removed a legal challenge standing in the way of Shell Oil’s plans to drill wells off Alaska’s shore this summer.

THREE judges from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a case that challenged federal approval of Shell’s exploratory drilling plans in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas.

The expedited ruling followed oral arguments last week in Portland, Oregan. The court determined that the federal Minerals Management Service met its obligations to consider the potential threat to wildlife and the risk for disaster before it approved Shell’s Arctic Ocean project.

Shell Oil is looking for the opportunity to drill three exploratory wells in the Chukchi and two in the Beaufort this summer with a 514-foot drilling ship, the Frontier Discoverer.

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An application of a multilateral junction system offshore Australia’s Northwest Shelf replaces 18 single wells with nine multilateral wells, saving significant time and cost.

By Brett Lawrence, Apache Energy Ltd.; Mike Zimmerman, Andy Cuthbert and Steven Fipke, Halliburton

Multilateral technology uses fewer production well slots to effectively drain a reservoir, saving time, money and improving NPV. One of the benefits of multilateral (MLT) well architecture is the reduced cost of the subsea infrastructure. Additional cost benefits include reduced top-hole drilling costs, reduced project execution time, accelerated production, fewer rig moves and a smaller environmental footprint. To take advantage of the benefits, the appropriate multilateral technology must be selected to avoid introducing additional risk and non-productive time (NPT) to the project.

Over the past 10 years, TAML level 5 MLT technology has been used extensively in the North Sea. It had, however, never been used in the southern hemisphere. Because the TAML level 5 system had a proven track record in subsea installations and was able to provide hydraulic and mechanical isolation of connected wellbores, it was decided that the technology would be inaugurated in the Van Gogh field in the Northwest Shelf of Australia.